On Land, at Sea, and in the Air

As an airline pilot I'm always on the go. I'm 55 years old. I've been flying for over 30 years with five different airlines. I live out of a suitcase and I'm constantly torn between carrying everything I might need while I'm away, and wanting to keep the luggage burden to a minimum. My IBM laptop is a wonderful convenience, but when you add up the whole package of cables, power supply, CD-ROM's, etc. in addition to carrying four to six days of uniform supplies in my suitcase, and a very heavy chart case it can be a bit overwhelming. Now, with my Pocket PC, I can leave my laptop at home and still have almost all the software, entertainment and data that I need. Although I've recently purchased a Treo 650 as my cell phone, I still use my iPAQ h4350 Pocket PC as my primary handheld device. This tiny device has certainly made my life easier and more organized.

In the air

As an airline pilot, one of the things I love most about my Pocket PC is that I can connect to my laptop PC and sync my scheduling information, which I have previously downloaded from the airline's mainframe. The information includes my trip schedule, crewmember names and payroll numbers, days off, vacation time I have coming, and more.

I live in Sarasota, Florida but my airline base is in Philadelphia, so I spend a lot of time commuting via air between the two cities. (The airline lets pilots fly for free if there's an open seat when they're going to work.) To help pass the time while riding, I answer my e-mail, listen to music and watch movies on my Pocket PC. I keep a lot of MP3s on my 1GB SD storage card, along with a least one good movie. I use PocketDVD Studio (http://www.pocketdvd.ca/) on my PC to convert the movie DVD to a format more suitable to the Pocket PC. The conversion takes about one hour, producing a video file about 250MB in size. Then I just file-copy the movie onto my storage card and slip it in the iPAQ. I absolutely love being able to listen to music and watch movies while I'm commuting to work or on our many "productivity breaks" of downtime between flights.

I use TCPMP to enjoy movies in my spare time.

Another advantage of the Pocket PC is that it boots up instantly and has terrific battery life. I used to watch DVDs on my laptop PC during commutes. I'd wait for the plane to rich 10,000 feet, then wait for several minutes while the laptop booted up. I'd have to reverse the process when we started our descent (with flight attendants glaring at me). And, of course, the laptop's battery was always getting drawn down. The whole thing was a bother and I was seldom able to watch an entire film during a flight. Now, when we reach 10,000 feet, I hit the Pocket PC's "On" button, fire up the free video player program TCPMP (http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/download), and start playing my movie. I love the reaction of the passengers who see me holding that tiny device watching movies and listening to music. I've probably sold a lot of PDA's this way—maybe HP should put me on commission!

Electronic E-6B (top) and FlyBy E6B (bottom) are flight computer programs for the Pocket PC.